


bloodsport

by PurpleLex



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Explicit Language, F/M, Heavy Angst, Kidnapping, Physical Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-13
Updated: 2017-10-13
Packaged: 2019-01-16 21:49:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12351240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PurpleLex/pseuds/PurpleLex
Summary: [ two-part tumblr prompt: "A baddie is threatening/hurting Karen in front of a tied up Frank. And he's raging?" ]





	1. part one

* * *

 

 

Karen’s no stranger to bruises.

Once, the marks used to be a source of pride for her. A nasty skid on the concrete when she was five and learning how to ride without trainers, a brief cry escaping her before determination had her climbing back onto the seat. Soft magenta blushes from the playground and then from brief semesters of track and softball before a much longer and more successful stint on the basketball court.

The pride stopped on the cusp of adulthood when she found herself thrown around in her car, waking in a strange hospital room to condolences from the doctor and blaming gazes of her parents, the purple and blue mosaic imprinted along her skin flagging her as alive where Kevin wasn’t. Ever since then, a bitter badge of survival is all they’ve meant.

Survival leaving small dots along her forearms after attempted muggings, rubbing raw at her wrists from harsh metal cuffs. Survival etching a red line over her throat from strangling bed-sheets, blue blossoms along her stomach from kidnappings, yellow blemishes on knees and elbows from fall after fall and yet another car crash.

Kevin used to poke at her wounds when they were young, forever more level-headed than her. As she showed off the pulsing marks of pain, he would prod her with questions and concerned looks. She’d wince and tease him. The oldest memories overwhelm her in vivid snapshots now as she sees herself, lanky and towering over him as he comes running up asking after this new bump and bringing band-aids for that new scratch.

He always wanted to take care of her, unaware of just how much she cared for him. Protecting him from monsters under the bed, bullies at school, the lies of their parents.

Until she failed.

Just like she was with Frank now.

It’s a stupid notion, thinking she could protect the man branded by a white skull and leaving a trail of bodies in his wake, but that’s what she’d done. What she’d tried to do, anyway, with every piece of information she’d passed his way, every warning text or call she’d sent, every lie that spilled easily from her lips when confronted by police and friends alike. It was all worth it, she knows that even in this moment.

It was worth it because she knew him, believed in him and what he did. She couldn’t have stopped caring and trying to protect him if she’d even tried for a second.

Which made it all worse that she was being used as his weakness, now, because of that.

He stares at her and traps her in that all-too-familiar look, everything else lost to her except his overwhelming concern. Grief without any regard for himself.

The hand on her shoulder moves to her wrist without warning after the latest taunting spiel, yanking her arm harshly behind her back. A sharp pressure builds in her joint, makes her gasp, and Karen barely manages to bite back a wince as her knees threaten to give out. She stumbles but focuses on standing steady, nails digging into the arm at her throat.

This latest hurt clears her mind by forcing her to blink away from Frank, blurred gaze turn to the floor, the haunting ghosts in her head shattering away for the moment. She won’t give this asshole – a large-scale drug runner they’d both been tracking for several weeks – the satisfaction he wants.

Her arm twists further as he laughs. Karen bites down on her tongue, a gush of iron filling her mouth.

Frank pulls tightly on the cuffs and chains that descend from the ceiling and currently hold him within a two foot radius. When she’d first seen it, seen him beaten and scuffed up with double black eyes, part of her wondered with horror just what the typical activities of this room were. What abuse – or worse – these walls would reveal if they could talk.

A shiver rolled over her skin.

Frank grunts loudly at the back of his throat, the sound reverberating off the walls as a distorted growl. “I’m gonna flay you alive, you piece of shit! Every time you touch her’s one more hour I’m gonna enjoy carving out your organs, you hear me? Let her go!”

“There it is! The demands. Finally,” the drug runner tsks. “How long until we get on to the bargaining stage, hm? I want to see you beg the way you watched my brother before blowing his brains out.”

Frank sneers. “Pathetic bastard, too afraid to come at me yourself. Nah, gotta stand back and torture a woman! You fucking coward! Well here I am, huh?! Come on, stop with the antics and step up, try to hurt me yourself, yeah? I’m gonna snap your fuckin’ neck like a twig!”

“Oh, but I am hurting you!” Karen gasps sharply as the arm at her neck briefly releases its hold on her neck, stops stifling her lungs into small breaths, only to be replaced by the man’s hand crushing her windpipe like a vise. She flails, clawing at his arms as Frank shouts and tries to lunge forward yet again only to be jerked back.

Black stars scratch across her vision.

They’d kidnapped her right out of the parking garage of the Bulletin, surprising her at the end of a near all-nighter that bled several hours past midnight, but she didn’t make it easy for them. No, she collected a fair number of bruises along her arms that she could already feel throbbing, a hit to her stomach that knocked the air out of her lungs for the first of many times tonight. Her heels were lost somewhere in the scuffle as she found herself being picked up and responded by kicking defiantly at them as best she could.

Her best wasn’t enough, though.

God knows how long she’d screamed in that trunk, fought against them when they dragged her out again, or how long it’s been since she was pulled into this room by the hair and used as nothing more than a chess piece to taunt Frank with.

She’s never seen him look this hopelessly enraged. She’s never felt more trapped.

But Karen doesn’t stop now, either. She brings the heel of her foot down on one of her assailant’s before throwing her head back, catching him in the nose. The grip on her lessens briefly. She trades another explosion of pain through her head for a full breath of oxygen, twists enough to lift her knee for a strike to his nuts.

He sucker punches her kidneys.

Karen’s knees knock against the concrete floor this time as her body seizes in shock. Frank roars something but she doesn’t hear it, can’t process the words as her lung stutter, all the nerves along her spine tingling with thorny barbs of discomfort as she barely manages to keep herself propped up on shaky hands.

The criminal disregards her in her temporarily incapacitated state as he starts to pace.

“It bothered me – why you didn’t show up to try and finish the job after blowing up my warehouses, killing my brother. I went through all that effort planning for you, and yet. Nothing. But the Punisher doesn’t ignore anyone. He doesn’t let anyone get away…. But all those questions cleared up when Miss Page’s article here got splashed across the news. Just like that, the police started kicking down my doors.” He leans over her, voice pitching towards a conspiratorial whisper. “You’re a bold one, eh?”

Karen straightens enough to glare.

It earns her a kick to the stomach for the effort and her hip catches on the floor, another bloom of an ache while she clenches her teeth shut to keep the yelp silent. Dizzy, sore, and exhausted, Karen has a fleeting moment of wondering if these bruises are going to be her last. Etched into her skin when she lays on a slab in the morgue.

What a pathetic way to go.

She wouldn’t accept that.

“I’m gonna break every goddamn bone in your body, you son of a bitch! You fucking worthless piece of human garbage–”

“Does he swear like that in bed?” The runner asks her as he leans over again with his hands on his knees, shark’s grin showing teeth.

Karen meets his eye, smirk twisting her lips slightly. And then she spits a mouthful of bright red blood all over his face.

Stumbling back with a curse and swiping at his eyes, Karen takes the opening to leap to her feet. “Frank!”

Everything aches and screams at her to stop moving, stop fighting, but she staggers to run the distance separating them in this dilapidated excuse of a old basement, catching his eyes. His rage is palpable, mingling with her own, propelling her to move faster despite the labored pains cutting into her sides.

A hand latches onto her coat with a yank.

Karen almost slams to the ground, something popping in her wrist when she just barely manages to brace herself with her hands. Uncomfortable heat flares to life underneath her skin there. She ignores it, same as the rest of her injuries, and kicks back, her heel colliding with his cheek. “You bitch!”

“Karen!” Frank yells. His voice is stretched ragged from all that he’s been protesting and threatening, dark and terrifying and entirely the Punisher she rarely actually sees, but there’s something in it that clicks with her instincts. Focusing, she stumbles to run again, more crawling than not as she keeps dropping from all her muscles straining to keep her up as her equilibrium sways. She won’t die here.

And she won’t let him, either.

There’s nothing in the room – no weapons, furniture, not even a piece of stray garbage – to use as a weapon. Nothing except Frank.

“Behind!” She doesn’t have to ask what he means as she dives forward, past where he’s stretched the chains taut at the end of his line, stepped forward as much as possible.

The drug runner shouts something as some of his fingers catch along her hair.

They don’t curl around their target, though, as Frank lands a fated kick to his balls. The man drops.

Frank catches him with his ankles, spins him around and down on his back to press a boot against the criminal’s neck. He grunts. The other man’s veins bulge visibly against his temples and forehead as his hands grasp at leather and shoestrings. His face shades purple. Frank grunts again, savage, when a snap sounds and the man starts gurgling, drowning in his own blood.

Karen screws her eyes shut, burying her face into her arm a split second before Frank starts stomping.

Crack. Crack. Crack.

The man’s skull fractures and breaks apart, echoing off the thick gray walls around them, each blow sounding more and more wet and nauseating. Memories resurface with a vengeance, distorted and all too powerful. The sickening sounds of crushing metal and shattering glass, stuttered last breaths and thick blood on her fingertips, picture after picture flashing in her mind’s eye of crime scene after crime scene where victims lay butchered or gunned down without deserving it.

“Karen.”

She blinks. With a start, she realizes she’s got her head and arms pressed to the ground, shuddering violently and nearly hyperventilating.

“Karen.” It’s a hoarse attempt at a gentle whisper. Cautiously, she lifts her head as her heart hammers wildly underneath its rib-cage.

Frank’s standing there with his arms still pulled tight above his head but his jeans and boots are splattered almost darker than black, mangled mess of a head that appears nearly decapitated by brute force alone lying in front of him, a paint project of blood and brain matter splashed in a cruel macabre around them. Karen gags.

Hand held against her mouth, she drops her head and scans herself with wild eyes, catches the splashes of crimson on the side of a leg that’d been exposed while she had what was quite possibly a panic attack. It’s nothing compared to the canvas of pink, purple, and blue bruises speckled across every inch of skin she can find exposed, though. These were more than marks of survival – felt more simple than that.

It was an endurance test.

The same endurance she saw mar Frank’s cheeks and knuckles, stomach and ribs every time she saw him.

She sucks in a shaky breath and avoids his stare as her gaze rakes over his face, dipping down to his shoulders.

The rage is gone, drained out with the kill. All that remains is distress.

“Hey…. It’s okay.”

He shouldn’t say that. It’s a lie. Their trapped situation remains unchanged – there were more men outside that could come in at any minute to discover their boss stomped into Hell while Frank stood as chained as before – and she was having a hard time getting her legs to cooperate.

“Karen.”

Her eyes snap to his.

Something about the way he says her name, ground out in a whisper with missed syllables from a voice worn down, helps her take a deeper breath this time. The air is heavy with humid musk and a metallic tang, now, but it rights her enough. She’s able to nod after a moment. The gesture is more than a bit manic, but she manages it, at least, and takes in his responding one with renewed confidence.

Karen crawls through the gore, tries not to think about it as she searches the man’s body. A gun at the back of his waistband. Another strapped to his ankle. A ring of keys in one of the pockets. Knife concealed at the hip underneath his shirt.

She stands on wobbly legs. “Easy there,” Frank says quietly.

Unwanted tears fill her eyes, almost spill out. Karen inhales another deep breath. “Hold still,” she says, unhappy but not surprised at the quiver in her tone.

Frank nods.

It takes a minute to try out several different keys until one fits the lock at one of his wrists and then she’s moving on to the other, focusing intently on the task at hand until both his arms are free, dropped down at his sides as he rolls his shoulders. Karen doesn’t look at him again before she’s barreling forward, fingers gripping at his jacket tightly and bare feet slicked in a pool of blood be damned.

Hands firm and solid, he cradles the back of her head and doesn’t hesitate to hold her, desperate and unyielding.

Warm tears track down her cheeks as short-lived relief bursts across her jittery nerves. “Frank?”

“Yeah?”

“Next time I say I’ll take care of it with the law, don’t listen. Just kill the bastard.”

A hint of a chuckle against her neck, Frank shudders. “Yes, ma'am…. I won’t let this happen again.”

It’s all just wishful thinking – he can’t really promise that and she can’t really promise not to throw herself into danger again, either.

But it’s a nice thought.

Karen steps out of his arms slowly, careful not to slip as he keeps a lingering hand at her back. Once she’s steady, ignoring the way her feet are starting to stick to the floor, she picks up the guns she left resting on the dead man’s chest. She tries not to look straight at his bashed-in face as she straightens, handing one over the Frank and keeping the smaller one for herself.

With a glance to the door, she squares her shoulders. “I’ll follow your lead. Yeah?”

A dark flash of anger clicks into place behind his eyes once more. “Stay close behind me.”

She nods. He brushes a loose strand of hair behind her ear before bending to pick up the knife, too.

Adrenaline flows back into her veins as they stand at the door, Frank holding his hand up to count to three for her. Pulling the cuffs of her coat back down to her wrists, Karen blocks the vibrant bruises and everything else from her thoughts, sharp-edged anger drawing her attention into the tunnel vision of survival. It’s nowhere close to Frank’s rage, but by the time he kicks down the door, she’s more than ready.

They’ll get through this, too. It’s what they do.


	2. part two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [ Anonymous asked: Could you maybe write a follow up with Frank being the one to clean Karen up afterwards for a change instead of the other way around? ]

* * *

 

 

Karen walks home at the cusp of dawn without her shoes for the first time since high-school.

During freshman and sophomore years, she’d snuck out a handful of times, pulled along to harmlessly uneventful underage drinking by friends as she got caught up in the high of defying parents and shamelessly gossiping about the rest of the town while, delusional from their youth, they all pretended they could be social reformers if they wanted to. At least they’d only laughed about others behind sports field bleachers and crammed into the backseats of cars. They weren’t like the supposedly responsible adults, whispering in the much more sacred confines of church service.

Kevin caught her the last time, half-stretched out the second-story window and waving wildly.

He’d covered for her when their mother came down the hall for a late-night check. Guilt tore through her at how effortlessly he thought to make up a distraction, how simply he’d lied about her needing space for a long night of studying, how excitedly he questioned the alcohol on her breath and the state of her bare feet after her flats were lost at some point climbing fences.

If their parents found out about her slight rebellion, she could handle that. But if Kevin followed her trail?

Karen spun a tale about how boring it all was, smile collapsing on her little brother’s face, and together they made a pinky promise to keep the secret. One of many at the time. One of many more to come.

That night in Vermont was so very different from this – starlit skies versus blacked-out nothingness, the smell of maples and birch leaves against the stench of gas and waste, cushy grass better than cracked concrete – but she’s reminded, anyway. Can’t stop reflecting on the numerous life-changing secrets she’s kept, wondering why this bloody one doesn’t feel any worse. The adrenaline seeping out from her veins only leaves her vaguely numb and trembling.

“Hold on,” Frank says suddenly, hand slipping from her back. It had been a gentle pressure since they’d started walking, soothing and grounding, and she only becomes aware of how much she’d been leaning on him when she has to lock her knees to keep from stumbling.

Although confusion furrows her brows, she nods and waits at the corner while he opens the door of an all-hours bodega, gray fluorescent bulbs inside briefly illuminating the entirety of the street. She recoils.

A part of Karen wishes she could be bothered by how easily she’d slotted alongside him half an hour ago, gun in hand, Punisher mask turning his face flat and eyes dead. The rest of her can’t let go of a bizarre pride. Pride at how they’d managed to make it out alive and in one piece, how she’d held her own, how he’d trusted her without second thought when she shot over his shoulder before another asshole could rush him.

Seven against two.

She didn’t want to play those odds ever again.

Frank emerges tearing a tag off something and tossing it into the trashcan by the door before kneeling in front of her. When she catches sight of what’s in his hands, a delirious laugh nearly bubbles forth. Flip-flops with rainbow stripes. They’re all the more cheerily out of place when he sets them down in front of her feet stained by blood and dirt, tense swallow stuck in her throat.

The cheap cushion beneath her heels is worth the ridiculously alarming visage, though. “Thanks.”

Nodding at her quiet voice, his hand finds its way against her spine once more after they keep walking. She sighs and fastens her coat more securely. A futile attempt at hiding the rest of her blemished skin. Fingers tightening at her back in a twitch of a motion, she thinks he might’ve noticed, but only the low thrum of a city half-asleep swirls around them. Neither of them say a word.

Routine washes over her reflexively as soon as she’s twisting her key into its lock. Leaving the door open behind her for Frank to close, she fetches the first aid kit from underneath the bathroom sink, cataloging his cuts and scrapes with a clinical gaze before pushing at the edges of his jacket where he’s standing in her living room after setting the guns on her table. “Your fingerprints,” Frank had said when she looked at him tucking them into his waistband, magazines empty of bullets as everyone around them laid dead.

Folding his hands over hers, he stops her now with the soft touch. Karen blinks at him.

“I’m fine.”

The haunt behind his stare springs tears to her eyes, hard and fast, reminding her why this isn’t a typical night of him showing up knocking on her door or window, consoling assurances and quick retorts always ready on his lips as she patched him up, a habit born from her own insistence after accidentally finding him worse for wear. They’d been doing that for months now, but this– this was new. This made her the subject of scrutiny instead.

She ignores it by clearing her throat.

“Yeah, that’s what you always say.”

“Ma'am.”

“Would you just let me check?”

Frank chases her gaze as she drops it to his jawline, throat, tracing the thick red line starting to rise into visibility there from someone trying to strangle him. An injury he acquired before she’d been dragged into the room in front of him and toyed with mercilessly. After a long minute, he obliges by shrugging out of the jacket and lifting the hem of his shirt over his head swiftly.

He was right. Compared to what she often found herself on the other side of, the marks littering his chest and arms were rather mundane. Some intense bruises forming, a surface scratch here and there, but no bullet holes or stab wounds or obvious bone displacement. A deep breath shudders through her lungs.

Turning around, she steps to the table and closes the kit’s lid. “I can’t believe you got chained up by those incompetent assholes.”

“Karen.”

Voice pitched low and catching on the syllables again, same as he had after stomping her abuser to death in that claustrophobic basement only an hour ago, she can’t help freezing in place.

“Let me check you….Please.”

Echoing her words, the usual tease is nowhere to be found right now. Only desperation.

A part of her crumbles, dismissive bravery swept away, and she faces him with a tear dripping down her cheek. In an instant, Frank cups her jaw, thumb brushing away the moisture with eyes searching in a thinly-veiled panic. “Hey, you’re okay. You’re okay.”

“I don’t want to see it,” she confesses, choking back a sob. Her shaking hands find his wrists. “I don’t want to see everything this time, I can’t–”

“You don’t. You don’t have to,” he promises, intense stare holding hers and just barely keeping her from collapsing. “Just keep your eyes on me, okay? You only gotta look at me.”

The fear carving lines into his face is palpable, pulling his frown wide as his fingers curl into her hair. She doesn’t want to – but that isn’t fair to him. Not with how many times he’s obliged her as she’s worried her lip in front of him and fretted over his wounds. Not with how every fiber of her being trusts him. Not with how, logically, at least one of them needs to know how bad off she really is.

She can depend on him, always. It’s her own anxiety drowning her from within.

Hesitantly, Karen lessens her grip.

The knot in the sash is terribly easy to loosen, coat slipping off her form in less than a minute. She reaches behind and deftly finds the zipper of the dress running nape to hips. This used to be a favorite of hers, pleated navy with a slimline skirt going past the knee, flexible enough to sit in for hours one day and hike through the city the next. A rough split stretches from the bottom halfway up her thigh now, threads worn and strained across its entirety from a lengthy night of assault.

As soon as the zipper’s down enough, she pushes it off her shoulders. The dress drops with a whoosh to the floor.

She steps forward, leaving the flip-flops underneath the ruined cloth, eyes fixed on Frank. In a brighter moment, at a brighter time, she might feel self-conscious from standing in only her underwear in front of him. But she doesn’t now.

Her lungs move shallowly as she watches his gaze fall down.

Frank scans her over once quickly before dark eyes work their way more methodically back across every inch of her mottled skin, jaw clenching after a minute as his hands slide from her cheeks. Fingers fluttering light caresses along her nearly dislocated shoulder, the ribs she’s lucky to have escaped with intact, she inhales sharply when he walks around and away from her without a word. The sound of plastic skidding on wood assuages her hammering heart.

The first aid kit.

Kneeling in front of her once more, he opens the kit on the floor and unscrews the alcohol bottle’s cap. Carefully, he cleans the cuts torn open on her knees, down her calves, before he’s moving up to the throbbing scrape at her hip spanning the width of her side. He moves around her, swabs at a laceration along the bottom of her rib-cage. She hisses.

“Sorry,” he whispers against her neck.

Shaking her head, Karen closes her eyes. Staring at the inanimate couch in front of her was a poor replacement for him, horrifying itch underneath her skin begging for her to just look down, just accept how damaged she was. How damaged she’d always be.

It was inescapable, catching up with her again and again and again.

“What caused this?”

Focusing on his voice, she takes a deep breath. The memory plays out in flashes behind her eyelids. “It happened when they first grabbed me. They– I kept kicking at them until I got one in his elbow and he almost dropped me, but I just hit the edge of the trunk. Hurt like hell at the time.”

At the time, because everything that came afterwards easily overpowered that specific pain. Frank roots around in the kit for something. “It’s gonna need stitches.”

“Thought it was just a bruise,” she says with a groan.

He braces a hand on her waist. “Unfortunately no. But it’s the worst you’ve got.”

Karen lets out a relieved sigh and then he’s warning her for the sting of the needle, weaving it through her skin with a steadier touch than she’d had when she stitched him up for the first time. There’s no surprise at that. She fixates instead on the warmth of his fingers across her stomach and side.

Despite the thread prickling her skin uncomfortably and the bruises forming a canvas across nearly the entirety of her body with varying severity, Karen feels her spine decompress slowly as the bundle of nervous energy disentangles inside her chest, Frank soothing her thoughts with his caring presence alone. He finishes patching her up by placing a small bandage over a cut above her brow.

Her eyes blink open. His are much calmer now, tenderness softening worried creases at the corners as he brushes the hair from her face. “You need to take a shower, and I should go.”

“No,” she says immediately. Apprehensively, he scrutinizes her. She holds firm. “Stay….Just stay.”

Once, she knows she would have definitely been self-conscious standing naked in front of Frank. Once, not all that long ago, Frank wouldn’t have stripped right alongside her, either.

But a lot could change in a year, in a couple months – even in a night.

She avoids the mirror in the bathroom, too. He doesn’t say anything as he turns her to face him as soon as they’re behind the shower curtain. The water’s nearly scorching, steam billowing around them from it as soon as it escapes the tap, but she thinks that maybe she’s not the only one needing the shock of the heat.

Dark red blood and dirt swirl innocently with soap suds around the drain.

“I’m sorry,” Frank finally says, all but breathing out the words as his fingers massage conditioner through her hair, spray beating against his back after she spun him to rinse. She has no reason to, but she keeps her hands on his collarbone.

Her lips quirk in the ghost of a smile as she exhales. “I’m not.”

Hands stilling at the back of her head, he watches her from a shadowed gaze.

“You’re alive,” Karen affirms. “I’m alive. We are alive…. Don’t apologize, Frank. It wasn’t you.”

“No, but it was because of me,” he reminds, disbelieving of her simplification with concern thrumming through his tone. “Because those assholes knew when I made an exception, that you’re– I care about you, that puts you in danger.”

She steps forward to completely capture his eyes with her own. “I told you – we won’t make that mistake again.”

Grip slipping to the curve of her neck, Frank swipes his thumb over her pulse-point absently before lifting once more to trace her jaw. His touch is reverent, exploring sensitively with unspoken questions.

Karen arches towards him, curling her own fingers along his shoulders.

“Anyone else touches you like that, comes after you, I’m gonna kill them too,” he grounds out, gaze dropping south of hers.

“Good.”

A whimper sounds at the back of her throat when their lips crash together.

Frank cradles her close, protecting her from even herself, and it feels like finding peace. It feels like finding home. To love him is a heavy package deal – him, his pain, his work – but it’s more than worth it as long as he’s here with her, running his hands softly across her bruised skin, warm and solid and absolutely devoted.


End file.
